Posted by Jane D on June 5, 2001, at 13:07:34
Mila,
This started with your posting below in the thread about gaps in work history where you suggested that there had to be something positive in periods of illness. At least I think that's what you said. Please correct me if I misunderstood you.
(The original post dated 6/2/01 http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010526/msgs/6258.html)
Excerpts from that post.
> Avoid seeing those periods as breakdowns yourself. there MUST have been something positive in those periods. Once you find it out, you won't feel like you had gaps in your life anymore.
....
> If anything, tell them about your wonderful resilience and ability to keep going even when it gets tough, gather resourses, rely on other people's help and skills, etc. (isn't it how you conquered your illness?) this is an asset.
...> every year seems today to have been choke full with activity and some productive behavior.
Mila,
I guess I really don't think that this is a positive experience although I'd love to be proved wrong. It may depend on just what variant of mental illness you had. I'm sure that, despite all the common ground apparent in these threads, the details of everyones experience are very different.
One of the things I remember feeling after my first bout of illness (let's call it depression) was that for the first time I had had a negative experience that I couldn't say had any redeeming value. Up to that point I could look at the various scrapes and bruises of growing up and tell myself "well that was awful, but it's part of what made me who I am and I'm ok". The depression was more like a time out. Two decades later I still feel that way.
My experience has been that it is a reduction of experience not a different one. I thought about less and also less clearly. I did less. I noticed less and learned less. And while I certainly thought I was feeling more intensely, in retrospect I'm not so sure. I think it's the contrast between different feelings about different things that gives them meaning. One overwhelming but undirected feeling, like "I hurt", which is about all I could manage, doesn't mean much. I would also include in there variants like "I hurt because x is wrong in my life" to be replaced the next day with "I hurt because y is wrong" and so forth. On really bad days I could only get as far as "I hurt because ..." and then not have enough clearness of mind to figure out what misery to fill in the blanks with. Didn't matter anyway.
I did learn a few things of course. It wasn't quite like going to sleep and waking up years later. But other people learned far more in that time. I learned a few tricks of compensation. I learned that the misery can end and to hang onto that knowledge even when I didn't believe it. But I wouldn't need to know these things if I didn't have depressions so I don't think I gained anything overall.
I also learned some things that I might be better off not knowing. I learned that I have very little control over what I feel and think. I didn't conquer my illness. It left me, with a lot of persuasion from an SSRI. (Who said that first?) If it had happened 20 years sooner I might have believed that it was my strength of will that made it happen. I know that it wasn't. It's hard to live with that knowledge.
All in all, I think the experience is mostly a loss. I think that's what makes it an illness that must be treated. I wouldn't admit this in person however. I don't know a way to say it that doesn't come across as "Pity Me" so when the subject comes up I look for an optimistic spin. I can and do say it's made me more understanding, tolerant, or tougher but I think that when I say this I am lying.
Jane
poster:Jane D
thread:6300
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010526/msgs/6300.html